Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Pigs in the Mud (Pretend Sensory Play)

Spring is almost here, but before we get there we need to get through our fifth season here in our part of New England: Mud Season. With the warmer temps this week we're getting closer to "mud season," but we're still not there quite yet. So we created some pretend mud to help us as we wait a little longer for the real thing.

And of course, where there is mud it's always fun to include PIGS!

To create our "mud" we used a cornstarch and water mixture. (Sometimes I've seen this either called oobleck, goop, or space mud.)

Materials:

Cornstarch

Water

Brown Food Coloring

Plastic pigs

Small trays

Basic Recipe: Mix 1 part water with 1.5 to 2 parts cornstarch. Mix until fully combined, and the mixture has a smooth consistency.

For this play: We combined about 1 and 1/2 cups cornstarch and 1 cup of water into each tray. (We added the food coloring to the water first.) I mixed it by hand until it had a slightly mud like consistency. (This meant adding a little bit more of each ingredient a little at a time until it felt right.)

Afterwards I added in pigs. We used both our larger pigs from our farm animals and the miniature Safari Toob animals which we've recently discovered. Later we added in some popsicle sticks for fences and ramps.

The boys were curious about the play sets up and approached the "mud" cautiously.

But once they got into it they had fun making the pigs play in the mud.

Their play included building fences and ramps.

They also enjoyed dripping mud onto the pigs.

Big Brother stuck with the play the longest and created some great story lines about the four piggies.

So although we're still waiting for the real mud season to arrive, we can at least have some fun with pretend mud until then!